My first flight was with my dad, from Philadelphia to Detroit to see his brother, my Uncle Jim. I was all of two, which made it (probably) some time in 1957. My dad remembered the aircraft as a DC-7, or an Electra. I thought it might have been the majestic Lockheed Constellation - it's the romantic in me. I remember dimly a flight attendant playing peak-a-boo with me. In reality, she was probably flirting with my 30 year-old barely out of the Marine Corps father.
My next flight was June, 1972. My Uncle Jim (funny how things have a way of working out), now living outside of Frankfurt, Germany, had invited me to spend the summer with my aunt and him. The flight to Frankfurt would become the standard against which I've compared all other flights. To wit:
My one-way ticket translates to about $3500 in today's dollars. I flew from Rochester to Syracuse (seventy miles) and then sat for several hours. The next flight was down to Philadelphia, where I sat for several more hours. Perhaps two hours late I boarded a creaky, cranky, aged TWA 707, a four-engine jet aircraft, bound for London. Only, the airplane couldn't make it that far on one tank of gas, so we stopped in Bangor, Maine to top off. Advertised as a forty-five minute delay, it was triple that.
I was wedged into the middle seat of a plane packed to the gills. On either side, two beefy (and surly) guys who had not gotten the message that the armrests belong to the dude in the middle. I had a book to read, and headphones were provided for the entertainment system.
Entertainment system...Ha! They plugged into the seat, but were acoustically operated (as opposed to electronically). The sound was literally piped to the ear pieces from some hidden, central location. The playlist - six or eight songs each on the six or eight channels - was bland. I still get a chill up my spine whenever I hear Argent's Hold Your Head Up, which came around every half hour from dusk on America's East Coast to dawn at Heathrow. There was a movie during the flight, which was so awesome I don't remember a thing about it. Dinner was served around midnight (nothing special). I was not even old enough to wash it down with a cocktail. I arrived in Frankfurt nearly 30 hours after I'd begun, a trip now made non-stop from Denver in a tad over eight hours, costing about a third as much, this for a round trip. Thus was international coach flying, circa 1972-style.
Compare that to a glorious flight in an exit row on a gorgeous US Airways A321 (Assholes and Elbows) in 2014. Flying home from seeing our oldest daughter sworn in as a Maryland attorney the day before the birth of our fourth grandchild - a little girl (On Track) seated in an exit row next to a Naval Academy cadet on Southwest. Flying down to see our eldest get married (Plane Talk) in Florida, watching the pelicans with Graham.
None of which beats a Thanksgiving flight we took to Liberia, Costa Rica to see some good friends marry each other (isn't that totally a fun sentence?). The FAs outnumbered us on the flight from Denver to Atlanta and the drinks were free. We had a ten hour layover, so we checked into the airport Hilton and headed for the bar. She had a deliciously light sun-dried tomato pizza, I a mound of crisp, tender cornmeal-encrusted calamari dipped in an elegant marinara sauce. After a great night's sleep we boarded a Delta 757 in mint condition and settled in for what we thought would be a normal flight.
It wasn't.
Pilots call the weather that day "Severe Clear." As we flew down the Gulf Coast of Florida we could see the Keys from thirty-something thousand over Tampa. Straight over the forbidden Island of Cuba, and out into the middle of the Caribbean. From our perch in coach, a cup of excellent coffee in one hand, a very good book in the other and the love of my own life at my side...we could see the Cayman Islands, little emerald jewels on a turquoise sea.
My friends are right. Flying just ain't what it used to be.
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